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MR writers jumped the gun a bit!

The employees who stole information allegedly used USB drives and AirDrop to offload sensitive Apple material to their own personal devices, as well as stealing presentations on unreleased SoCs and saving it to their cloud accounts.”​
”allegedly“ is in the wrong place! ❌ Or, is MR now judge and jury? ?

A similar error seems to underlie several of the comments!
Good point!

ALLEGEDLY stole information. . .
 
I’m not saying that taking gigabytes of protected data is excusable.

But I think apple really out to take a look at themselves and their work environments when they continue to have an issue of high-level employees jumping ship and sabotaging the company. Happy employees that want for nothing don’t do this sort of thing.
Unhappy employees should leave. Not leave and steal.
 
It sounds like Apple wants a reasonable royalty rate as compensation.
I think they're willing to take that as a fall-back position, but their preference in the filing is for Great Sacks of Money, Now.
 
Again this myth. Apple is not losing its employees at a higher rate than other companies.
High rate or not, it sounds like someone was incentivized to go elsewhere... and also decided to steal stuff that wasn't theirs.
 
That’s not the same story . Poaching is a daily occurrence and not a crime . IP theft is not and a crime
The thing is if Apple really has evidence that theft was committed they would have reported it to law enforcement, probably the Santa Clara County Sheriff. Maybe they did but I don’t see any mention of it in the article.
 
Knowledge inside someone's head belongs to them.

Knowledge on a company-issued computer belongs to the company.
if you are employed, you might want to re-read your contract of employment ...
knowledge in your head acquired while on employment to help eg building a product does not belong to you
 
I’m not saying that taking gigabytes of protected data is excusable.

But I think apple really out to take a look at themselves and their work environments when they continue to have an issue of high-level employees jumping ship and sabotaging the company. Happy employees that want for nothing don’t do this sort of thing.
“Happy Employees” can be just as motivated by greed as any employee - I would imagine that the barter for intellectual property and the ability to technologically leap-frog much of the industry and catchup to Apple offeres some very nice perks and financial incentives. People don’t leave those positions at the world’s most valued company just to get a better employee cafeteria. Apple has countless satisfied employees, and more trying to land a job there everyday. And you can bet employees have left Rivos too. And, importantly, what employee “want’s for nothing”? I would argue that EVERYONE wants something more than what they have, in some measure (unless they truly lack drive and ambition). The question is, what would some people do to get the ”more” that they want for.
 
I’m not saying that taking gigabytes of protected data is excusable.

But I think apple really out to take a look at themselves and their work environments when they continue to have an issue of high-level employees jumping ship and sabotaging the company. Happy employees that want for nothing don’t do this sort of thing.

Every organisation has their rotten eggs. No point trying to justify or rationalise their actions as somehow being the fault of “the system”.
 
EDIT: assuming it is indeed a negative outcome and a guilty endeavor, not just apple trying to apply scare tactics to previous ex-employees
It’s a totally different thing if the Qualcomm guys they hire take gigabytes of internal data with them. That’s just plain ol’ unethical on the part of the departing employees, and, if the new firm encourages this behavior, then that makes them culpable under law. (Not sure if the latter is what’s going on, but it kinda sounds like it. I suppose if the startup deliberately picked engineers they believed would be likely to exfiltrate data, even without direct instruction to do so, that would make them culpable, too.)
It is badly off putting from the get go that a new company or hiring opportunity starts with such wrong footing… this will backfire, as it is such a deterrent.
At least me personally wouldn’t want to work for this company, nor its founders nor the people that are joining and found with dirty hands. Not there nor now nor anywhere else for the foreseeable future, no matter the amount of money. Why people risk it is beyond me.

No it's not. Stealing confidential information and trade secrets is a crime. And is punished by law.
Your reply to “karma for Apple”, kudos to you.
I find it mind boggling the lengths people go to justify theft, crime and worse while hoping they get away with it because in their heads the world is only seen as the oppressed and the oppressor, nothing else. Doing illegal things against said “oppressor” is sadly justified.

It’s not that simple.

You can have proprietary knowledge in your mind without relying upon documentation. It is still not permissible to be using that proprietary knowledge of your previous company in work you do for a new employer. (Unless you’ve been given permission to do so).

That they left such obvious evidence of their (alleged) theft of information just makes the case against them stronger.

It would be a similar situation if we were talking about classified information. You can transmit such information verbally and having knowledge of such information is equivalent to having the documents themselves.

(edited to add “alleged”)
Interesting, I guess that a some point if someone’s job is fenced out (i.e. an engineer whose work is to do V8’s and can’t work anywhere because of patents, can’t design them, can’t talk them, can’t do anything basically) then that person should be compensated for the time being?
In the video game industry, contracts imply that you can’t work for another video game company until after a year has passed since the last day on a previous one, due to competition and the fact that experience goes straight into the new one.

But this is complete bollocks, “can’t work for a year” is too vague and punishing, so nobody complies and to my understanding it is non enforceable.
 
You would think that working for Apple, you would know that if you steal IP on your own person iCloud, they're going to be able to find you lmfao
Just goes to show, privacy and security huh. Why would anyone trust iCloud is beyond me.

Sounds like Apple needs to up their endpoint security game. I was working in less sensitive environments and people couldn’t -simply connect external harddisks or USB sticks.
Yes, and they've also got a problem if they are poking into people's iCloud accounts to get evidence. That will blow a big hole in their "Apple is privacy and security" mantra.

Wow! Talk about being unethical. They messed with the wrong one. Apple is not playing games especially when it comes to trading secrets.

How come we don't hear news like this about Microsoft or Samsung?
Good question. Either because those those companies understand privacy and security, so it doesn't happen; or it does happen, and you're not reading MSRumors or SamsungRumors?

They have been. Remember the bonuses Apple was offering. That's alot of money.

Bonuses with conditions. Big difference to simply improving pay and conditions, and improving working vibe, so that people want to stay. I mean, there is something that smells about Apple. They make great products. But there is a stench.

Anyone else notice all the things Apple alleges these people did which should be impossible for Apple to know unless their privacy claims about their own products and services are BS?
Yeah, I noticed that. But we already knew it was BS, thus why we noticed.
 
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Just goes to show, privacy and security huh. Why would anyone trust iCloud is beyond me.
the article didn’t say Apple saw the content of the user’s data in the cloud. They probably simply see the storage use by user and can correlate a “massive data-dump” to and from the account with a corresponding work time. the amount of storage consumed is going to of course be tracked/monitored. How else would you know if a user is at or over a plan limit. That is not a privacy violation. Circumstantial evidence such as this, especially when it exists in multiple forms, can lead to very concrete conclusions.
 
Corporate espionage is nothing new, and is probably more prevalent now in high tech industry, especially in companies like Apple. Right now, Apple Silicon is the magic that everyone is eyeing for.

All we need to see if somebody, a competitor, suddenly buys this company and have a very competitive alternative to the M1 out of nowhere.
 
Corporate espionage is nothing new, and is probably more prevalent now in high tech industry, especially in companies like Apple. Right now, Apple Silicon is the magic that everyone is eyeing for.

All we need to see if somebody, a competitor, suddenly buys this company and have a very competitive alternative to the M1 out of nowhere.
Well, it said there is already buyers for Rivo…
 
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